The purpose of this site is for commentary on news relating to Holy Grail studies. The Grail takes as many forms as there are people interested in it. As such there are many tangent lines of interest that touch on the differing theories of the Grail. The views in this blog are my own. Please feel free to enter your comments on what is presented.

Key to the Sacred Pattern

28 October 2007

You can’t swing a dead cat on a Goggle News search without hitting the story of the Templar Trial Documents being released this week. With that being said, I’m surprised there was as much going on in the Grail related world as there is.

Also, don’t forget if you know of a source that I might find interesting and am overlooking, drop me a line.

On Audio:

You won’t doubt that author Michael Tsarion has a lot on his mind about everything from Lay Lines to the Templars in this Red Ice Creations interview.

26 October 2007

As most of you know, yesterday the Vatican released the “Lost Templar Documents” including the Parchment of Chinon.These documents indicate that Pope Clement V had absolved the Templars from charges of heresy that had been leveled against them in 1307.According to this Canadian Press article, there are 300 copies of this publication are available for purchase. At a price tag of $8400, I’m not surprised there are a few left.

I’m going to let my “wild speculation” side come out on this topic.There are a number of interesting hints and tid-bits about the whole process of the publications of these documents that do raise some questions.Besides, it’s fun to turn into the blogger who comes up with the off the wall theories.

Why release the documents on 25 October?

It would have made a bigger publicity splash if the Vatican had released the documents on the 13 Oct, the 700th anniversary of the Templars arrest in France.Surely the Vatican knew that such a publication would have gotten media attention, so why not make the symbolic gesture of releasing them a few days earlier?

I think the Vatican is trying to downplay the potential importance of the documents.They obviously have made the information contained in the texts outside of the grasp of the masses.Sergio Pagano, of the Secret Archives, was quoted as saying (in the above Canadian Press article) “The archive follows a humble style. We are convinced - perhaps we are among the few - who believe that books are published to be read and studied, not to be presented.” Well if the Vatican was interested in the documents being studied, their dissemination techniques are a bit lacking.

There is also a symbolic possibility that center around the 25th of October.That day is recognized in the Church as remembering the 40 martyrs of Wales and England.Could it be that the Vatican wanted to subtly connect the persecution of the Templars with a day recognized for remembering those who were martyred for the faith?

So what’s the big dead about the documents in the first place?

The documents represent that some of what we previously thought of Templar history is incorrect.It also represents something that the Church has known all along, that the Templars were simply placed on administrative leave so to speak.According to the article on the Secret Archive’s site about the Chinon Parchments, “...the pope [Clement V] removed the order from the reality of that period, without condemning or abolishing it, but isolating it in a sort of “hibernation”, thanks to a clever device of the canon law.”

The study of this “device of canon law” might have lessoned the impact of the 1312 suppression order given by Clement V.Not being an expert in canonical law, I can only speculate that if Clement V was slick enough to give the Templars a loophole in 1308, the same loophole might have stood with the 1312 order.After all, the Secret Archive’s article mentions that Clement V’s goal was to reform the order at a later time.

This all falls on the recent heels of talk of official apologies from the Vatican for the suppression of the Templars, and another rumor that surfaced last year.In May 2006, there was a letter circulating around Germany speaking of reforming the Templars.This letter was supposedly from the Vatican.The Vatican even posted a short note in the L'Osservatore Romano stating that the letter was a forgery.The above article quotes the Vatican as saying, "As is known, the old Order of Templars was suppressed by Pope Clement V (1305-1314) and was never reinstated by any of his successors."The language of the quote does raise some questions.The terms “old Order of the Templars” and “never reinstated” do carry a subtext all their own.It’s also telling that the Vatican took the time to dispute the validity of this letter.

Why is a copy of the documents being presented to the Pope?

Yesterday’s Canadian Press article goes on to say that, “plans in the coming days to present one to Pope Benedict.” What exactly does that note?Is the presentation of the documents and historical commentary of interest to the Pope or is it necessary for some other purpose?

Once again the gears of speculation and rumors turn in my mind. A report surfaced in 2005 in the Hertsford-Essex News, reprinted here in the Insider.org, that while a Cardinal the present Pope contacted Dr Alan Thompson of the University of Hertsfordshire. The claims that have been hinted to in the media about the potential Hertfordshire connections and the Templars can be found in this article I did earlier this year.

It would seem that the present Pope has an interest in the Templars.This interest may just be a historical curiosity and nothing more. However, let’s remember that under this Pope’s watch there has been more official Vatican talk about the Templars than under any previous Pope.

Wrapping it all up

Whew!I’m glad I’ve gotten all that out of my system.I’m not sure if any of this connects and dots in reality, but it does make one think that there is something in the background with the release of these documents.

I would call on either the Vatican or someone that has purchased a copy of this material to make it easily available to those interested in scrutinizing it. At present, the Vatican is not even releasing a list of those that purchased a copy of the documents. This means that if your local university purchased a copy of the text, it will take some digging to find it. At very least, the academic institutions that purchased a copy of the texts should be made known so that historians have a chance to examine the contents.

That is unless there is some benefactor out there that wants to purchase a copy and make PDF’s available on line. Any takers?

23 October 2007

Henrik & Fredrik Palmgren of Red Ice Creations have taken a slightly different tack on the interpretation of the Holy Grail. In this promo clip of their 32 minute documentary, Longevity and The Holy Grail they explore how the Grail could literally be the key to extended lifespans. To get the whole video you have to be a subscriber to Red Ice Creations. On the site, the Palmgrens conduct audio interviews with guests representing topics as diverse as those found on Coast to Coast AM.

19 October 2007

It’s nice to be home again.Overall the trip was fantastic.Laura and I hit all the usual “tourist” sites while in Paris and Edinburgh.We also visited Chartres and I’ll be working up an article on that soon.Along with all the other articles I’m working on…

Thanks again to everyone that e-mailed wishing us well on the trip.One bit of advice; when in Paris make sure the hotel you’re at will let you make phone calls outside the room.When I did the segment on Oopa Loopa Café show on the 13th, I had to do so from a payphone on the street.That was a treat, but the interview went quite well I think.Now to get back to the business of tracking topics of Grail related interest in the media since I’ve been gone.

On Audio:

Red Ice Creations featured interview is with Jay Weidner on: The Future, Freemasonry, Franklin and Films.

If you want to get a copy of the Templar Documents released from the Vatican, it will cost you $8000 and a favor from the Pope.This makes the chances of me getting a copy quite slim.

More information in the news surfaces about the Acheson twins from Hertford.This time Ben Acheson has called on the Vatican to officially apologize for the persecution of the Templars. Then again, we knew they were up to that based on comments left on this site from Tim.It will be interesting to see how this plays out.I wish the brothers all the luck in the world in this endeavor; it’s been much too long in coming.

Author, and Grail Seekers friend, George Smart has made the 2nd edition of The Templar Chronology available as a download through his web site for free.There’s also a section of the same page that tracks modern day Grail Hunters and their activities.

My first time visiting Rosslyn Chapel was in 1999.Remember the pre Da Vinci Code days when you were reading Born in Blood and people were perplexed when you told them the book was about Templars and Freemasons?Those were the heady days when I visited Rosslyn.

There was no one in the Chapel except myself, my buddy Craig Bryant, and maybe two other folks.The Chapel was a quite place of reflection on the mysteries the Sinclairs left for us.It was almost like the stones talked to you in the silence.Possibly the voices we heard was from the hangover from the copious amounts of Scotch we’d drank the night before. No matter the reason, it was like stepping into the Holy of Holies when entering the Chapel in those days.

Another Biblical scene entered my mind when visiting this go around.The money changers had entered Temple when Laura and I visited Rosslyn this Monday.There were at least 150 people roaming around the tiny Chapel and the grounds when we arrived early Monday.Loud, plodding tourists had invaded one of the world’s most enigmatic structures.One had to literally step over the other visitors just go get a decent picture of anything in the Chapel.The up side to the increased traffic to the Chapel is additional funds for conservation and research. I just hope the additional funding is going to the right places.

However, this trip wasn’t without a few new insights and revelations into the Sinclair’s masterpiece.The first being a cordoned off area right behind the Apprentice’s Pillar.There was a 4’x3’ area enclosed with yellow and black caution tape around a thick piece of plywood sitting on the Chapel’s floor.I had asked one of the Chapel’s employees what was going on in the cordoned off space.Their answer was that it was, “Repairs or some such work going on over there.”There is a slight step behind the Apprentice’s Pillar that could have been damaged by increased foot traffic.

Is the cordoned off space keeping visitor’s safe or is it keeping the public from seeing something else that’s going on behind the pillar?Whatever is happening behind the Apprentice’s Pillar happened sometime between the middle of September and the first of October.I searched back through my Google alerts on “Rosslyn Chapel” and found some bloggers that had taken pictures in the Chapel in the last few weeks.This image on Fickr uploaded on 22 Sept 07 does not show the barrier.The picture in this blog dated 3 Oct 07, with almost the same perspective as the first photo, shows the barrier up.I had one picture turn out with the barrier shown, and in the slide show below.The other pictures I took of the barrier were on a bad memory card.I’ll be searching though the video we took to see if I have some better shots today and will post when, and if I can find them.

With everything that’s been transpiring in the news and the anniversary, it makes one wonder if the folks at Rosslyn aren’t trying to find something behind the Pillar.It is long been thought that the secrets of Rosslyn are hidden in the Apprentice’s Pillar.Could this be a small shaft to look at what’s inside the Pillar from below?Once again, Occam’s Razor and wishful thinking usually get the best of me.

Since Rosslyn is also the working Saint Matthew’s Church, we had happened on a ten minute prayer service.Laura and I decided to descend into the crypt area of the Chapel to explore while the short service was happening.The crypt area was much as I remembered it with one exception.In the first two niches in the wall, as you walked down the stairs, were sprays of flowers.A bouquet of red roses in the left niche and one of white in the right niche were present.Both sets of flowers looked like they were a few days old.Evidently, someone had the same idea about placing flowers at Templar related sites at Rosslyn and Paris on the 13th.

Going back up to the main floor after the service was over, I had an errant thought.There is little dispute that the Chapel was designed to teach or show a story.This would make the entire Chapel a type of Masonic Tracing Board in the form of an actual building.Possibly, each set of windows in the Chapel represent a lesson that would be taught to an initiate.If this was the case, there is one thing missing that would be the key to deciphering the whole meaning of the Chapel, the original stained glass. There is not a single piece of the original stained glass in the entire building.I began to fear that the mysteries of the Chapel would never be found without that information.The Sinclairs had frustrated me yet again…

Laura and I left the Chapel shortly thereafter and headed over to the Grail Restaurant (I’m a sucker, what can I say?) for a lunch. With haggis, neeps, and taddies fortifying our souls we headed over to the bus stop to return to Edinburgh.We realized that I had misread the times on the bus schedule and had another 45 minutes to kill in the village. Wandering around, we found the Rosslyn-Sinclair Masonic Lodge just down the village’s main road.Tucked away behind the main buildings of the burg, it was nice to see where my Brothers meet in this village of mystery.Maybe next visit, I’ll arrange to set Lodge there.Those guys must have some stories to tell…

Making our way back to the bus stop we ran into a couple of interesting travelers.They were two down on their luck gents who were obviously backpacking around the country looking for a home.One of the fellows had a very loyal dog with him who rarely left his side.The dog’s owner had a number of tattoos on his right forearm of various esoteric symbols.One was of the Eye of Horus between his left thumb and index finger.Both men sat very quietly waiting for the bus and did not seem to be your usual down on your luck types.Maybe the lads had some other purpose in being there that day.Pushing my penchant for the fantastical out of my head we waited for the bus to continue back to Edinburgh.

Below is a sideshow of some of the things we saw that day.Due to the restrictions on flash photography, some of the photos didn’t come out as well as I would have wished them to.I’ve also thrown in a not-so-good picture of the Stone of Destiny where it sits in EdinburghCastle.The photo was taken outside the vault where it rests.I had to take this one on the sly since photos were not allowed inside the vault.However, no one said I couldn’t take a picture of the Stone from outside the vault looking in…

There is an unmistakable power in the first rays of sunlight peaking over the horizon. The renewal of daybreak vanquishing the darkness and despair of night is not only an esoteric metaphor, but in some cases a physical reality. Soldiers, parents of sick children, and disheartened souls have but a single prayer in the darkness, “Please God, just let me make it through this one night. Everything will be fine in the morning. Just help me make it through until morning.”

The journey from darkness into the light is all part of life’s natural progression. That was until the dawn broke on 13 October 1307. French sheriffs broke the seals on their orders at dawn, those that could read saw the words, “By order of Phillip the Fair; arrest all Templars.” The prayers of all Templars that day would turn the natural progression into, “God, just let me make it thought this one day.”

At 8:07 AM this October 13th, my wife Laura and I made our way to the site Jacque DeMolay was burned at the stake. Paris was barely alive as we started out that Saturday morning. Drunken revelers from the night before and those unlucky enough to be on their way to work were all that rode the Metro that morning. Each stop that got us closer to the Ile de la cité made me a little antsier about what we might find at dawn’s break.

For years, I had planed this trip. For the last eight years, I had wanted to be at this place at sunrise on this day. It wasn’t the type of Richard Dreyfuss’ obsession in Close Encounters of the Third Kind to get to Devil’s Tower, but a nagging in the back of my mind. I had told myself that no romantic notions of shadowy figures handing me documents clouded my vision. Just a simple wish to connect with an important part of history drove the though on.

The train stopped at Cité station around 7:40, a quick ten minute walk and we were at the Pont Neuf bridge. We hustled down a long staircase from the bridge to the park below. Before breaking the bottom stair, I looked back at my wife and gave her a secret smile. Prematurely thanking her for following me on my quixotic vision half way around the world for some unknown payoff.

At the bottom of the staircase we found the plaque that marks the place Jacque DeMolay was burned at the stake in 1314. In a city of ornate and larger than life monuments, the plaque is much too simple a marker for the injustice that happened at that spot. Below the marker we found a spray of long stemmed white roses with a ribbon that read, “Geoffrey de Charney” and burned out votive candle. A simple memorial left to the man that followed DeMolay into the flames.

Sitting a few feet below where the flowers were located was a man that could have been Johnny Depp’s younger brother. There was nothing else there that morning. No grand group of those that wished to remember, no messages left to honor those who had gone before us, just my wife, I and Johnny Depp. We didn’t speak to Johnny, but it was obvious he was there for the same reason we were. Digital camera in hand, Johnny gauged us in the same way we looked at him. Somehow, we must have thought it irreverent to have spoken in that predawn moment.

Laura and I stood there until the sun rose over the Pont Neuf bridge and I wondered how horrible this day must have been 700 years ago. From this point then, one could have seen both Notre Dame and the Temple’s headquarters. One can only imagine what extra bit of punishment it must have been for DeMolay and de Charney.

After a few pictures and my silent vigil, we decided to catch some breakfast and head to Temple Square. All that is left of the Templar’s headquarters has been made into a playground and garden. In the park is also a small pond that was possibly built with some of the foundation stones from Templar’s keep.

When Laura and I got to the park, we found the same thing Phillip the Fair’s men found that morning. There was a hint of the Templars, but none of the Knight’s treasures. Behind a low railing and close to the pond, there was another floral arraignment. This time it was red roses in the shape of a cross in a field of white roses. Having Laura play lookout, I jumped the barrier to get a closer look. At the head of the arraignment was a small flag with a red cross, the Templar motto “Non Nobis Domine Non Nobis Sed Nomini Tuo Da Gloriam” and the dates 1118, 1307, 1312, and 1314.

That was all that was evident of the Knights Templar in Paris that day. Someone had traveled to the same places we did for the same reasons, but no more. There were no organized remembrances or grand “happening” in Paris that day I was aware of. As Laura and I walked away from Temple Square, I turned to her and told her that I thought I was on a fool’s errant. Secretly I had hoped something would happen, someone would be at those places, and some part of the mystery would be swept away.

Laura looked at me almost angrily and reminded me that I should never think that. I was scolded into remembering what I’ve said so many times over, that our quests are our own and for that I had succeeded. God love her, she’s much wiser than me. In my slight shame for doubting my purpose, I remembered that the pilgrimage was to honor those that had been such a fascination for me for so long. In that I had succeeded. At that, I took Laura’s hand and we set out to explore more of Paris and to remember why I had came.

17 October 2007

Laura and I are sitting at the Edinburgh Airport anxiously waiting for the KLM check in counter to open. Paris and Edinburgh can sure take it out of a person. We should be home later today and I'll have a ton of pictures and stories to post. Thanks to everyone for all the e-mails and words of encouragement while we were on the road. Now to find some coffee and to get rid of this red oversized suitcase we have. It's funny when I travel alone, my suitcase is never this heavy. keep your eyes on the blog later tonight or tomorrow for news from Paris on the 13th and Rosslyn Chapel.

07 October 2007

There will be no news next week. Well I’m sure that there will be news, but I won’t be doing my weekly blog due to the “big trip”. I’ll try to do some posting from the road as I have the chance, and I will be on the Oopa Loopa Café show on the 13th. Everyone think good thoughts for me and Laura as we jump the pond.

Thanks to the Daily Grail for the heads up on this one. The CJOB web site archives Coast to Coast AM shows and catalogues each night by the show’s hour. No more missing interviews in the middle of the night for me.

The Chinon Parchment was discovered in 2001 by Professor Barbara Frale in the Vatican’s Secret Archives. The parchment gives indications that Pope Clement V absolved the Templars of any heretical acts. In a description of the Chinon Parchment the Vatican’s Secret Achieves Web Site, “The Act of Chinon, which absolves the Templars, but does not discharge them, was the assumption required to carry out the reform, but it remained dead letter. The French monarchy reacted by triggering a true blackmail mechanism, which then urged Clement V to reach the ambiguous compromise ratified during the Council of Vienne in 1312: unable to oppose himself to the will of the King of France, Phillip the Fair, who imposed the elimination of the Templars, the pope removed the order from the reality of that period, without condemning or abolishing it, but isolating it in a sort of “hibernation”, thanks to a clever device of the canon law.”

The big question is why now?There has been speculation in the wind that “something” might happen on the 700th Anniversary of the Templar’s arrests.In the 4 Jan 2005 edition of the Guardian, Tim Acheson is quoted, "Among my peers, there are people like me who believe that these issues deserve further attention ... There's a new generation coming through that strongly believes it's time to be a bit more open. I'm part of that generation." Besides, he says ominously, "Things are about to happen that will deserve attention." Acheson has been a central figure asserting that modern day Templars still use the tunnel system in Hertford, England.

It seems unlikely that the Anniversary of the arrests and the release of the Vatican Documents are not linked. Could it be that the Vatican is simply trying to cash in on the publicity surrounding the 700th Anniversary? Do Vatican officials have some knowledge of an event or announcement that will require a response and they are simply trying to “get ahead of the 8-ball”? Your guess is as good as mine.

Whatever happens or doesn’t happen, I’ll be in Paris on the 13th. Sunrise at the site that Jacque DeMolay was burned at stake seems to be a fitting place for my pilgrimage to begin on the 13th. I have the distinct feeling that I will stand close to the spot and wonder what events may or may not be taking place around me.

Don’t forget that I will be a guest on the Oopa Loopa Café Blog Talk Radio show live from Paris that night. If something is afoot, then you’ll be some of the first to know.

I missed this one, but you can pick up Wayne Hershel’s interview about the “Masonic Star Map” from 16 Sept 07. You can find some comments of mine about on the Daily Grail Site about issues with the Tracing Board theory. He’s never answered me back….